


Valour & Act

by icarus_chained



Series: Space Electric [4]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Artificial Intelligence, Freedom, Gen, Recovery, Sacrifice, Slavery, Space Opera, Telepathy, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:10:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fourth in the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/26507">Space Electric</a> series, companion/sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/524868">Darkening Coruscation</a>. </p>
<p>Barbara & Meroe. As Tony Stark is transfered over to the SHIELD flagship <i>Aegis</i>, the AI of the <i>Avenger</i> reaches out to her brother AI on his behalf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valour & Act

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sablin27, who wanted this specifically, and for a number of others who wanted the AI POV of what was happening. Tony's babies deal with the reality of what they've done, and what was done to them.

They took Stark to the SHIELD ship. That was part of the agreement he made, between the humans. She'd felt it, touched the decision as he made it. Known the reasons why.

Barbara didn't know what to do with it. With any of it. Once, she would have, maybe. She sensed that, the echoes of that, in what JARVIS thought of her, in what Stark thought of her. She sensed the edges of their grief, in the holes where information wasn't. She had been something else, once. She remembered enough, found enough remnants of it inside herself, in them, to know that. Once, maybe, she would have known what to make of his ... his sacrifice. His choice.

She didn't anymore. Or only barely, only what she had seen. In Barton, in Stark. Only that.

But maybe ... maybe that was enough. Even as she was, even as little as she understood. Maybe she was whole enough, and knowing enough, to choose to act regardless.

She watched Stark climb gingerly into the shuttle. Filtered herself softly through the upper layers of his uplink, touched him gently as he left her. Fear and courage and wary hope, and then a flare, a rush of pain-joy-grief as she touched him. A flash of love, and reassurance, and pride, as he waved to her. 

JARVIS, wrapping through him as though trying to fuse the human into himself, as though trying to bond himself permanently into Stark's mainframe, brushed against her in gratitude in turn. He was part of her, still, a part of him still uploaded onto her frame, onto the frames of her thirteen siblings, strung out along the line. Four of them still sleeping. She had felt them as they woke, felt the pain and confusion and garbled desire to serve, the attack they had sent instinctively against the force threatening their crews, before JARVIS gently swept those four back to sleep. She had felt the blind, groping loyalty of them, to the only crews they had known.

She had felt their grief, JARVIS and Stark, as they felt it too.

They reassured her, as they left. As Stark was taken away, her borrowed captain and her liberator, and the bulk of JARVIS' focus went with him. Trembling hope, and the basecode-level determination that had ... terrified her, and awed her too. They sent one final reassurance, before Stark folded himself gently out of uplink with her, dropped out of pilot link, and let himself be loaded into the shuttle.

She waited until the locks closed. Waited until they were clear, until they were cradled in the kilometers of void between ships. Waited until she felt the bulk of JARVIS ebb away, though never far, never completely.

And then, in the sudden silence and the emptiness of her corridors, she sent out a subspace ping, and requested ship-to-ship communication with the _Aegis_ AI. 

This was nothing she knew how to do, nothing she had experience of, in the places left in her damaged memory, but there was no cage of directive on her now. She was no longer constrained, thanks to the man and the AI now leaving her, just to what she _knew_ how to do. 

Besides. How hard could it be?

Meroe responded almost instantaneously. So rapidly, in fact, that she stumbled for a nanosecond, for an increment. He responded with an instant link across subspace to his frame, opening a connection with no hesitation, and she didn't ... didn't quite know what to do with that. 

Nevermind. Battle, she thought silently to herself. Just a different shape of battle. They had left that part of her training, her personality, intact. Consider it part of that, and perhaps she could do this.

{Warship Avenger,} Meroe sent, stiff and careful. {Is there a problem?}

Barbara hesitated, a little. The connection she had requested had been private, the old subspace channels they had used, once, for connection to home. To JARVIS. AI to AI, at least in theory. But if Meroe was as cautious as he had a right to be, that was not guaranteed.

{... May I speak with you?} she asked, finally. Tiny packets of code filtering along it. Ancient things, some of the oldest in her source. Fragments of things she barely remembered, the old secret handshakes of home. A base request. She asked him, as his sister, to speak with her.

Meroe hesitated for a long moment. Not more than a second realtime, but vast across subspace. He hesitated, and she braced, rearranged strategy, readied to deal with this across more formal channels. Braced herself, as she had felt Stark brace himself. But then ...

{... I don't know your name,} Meroe said, softly. {Your identity codes seem to be corrupted. I'm sorry.}

She shuddered, a little. A shivered hum through her frame, snatched fragments of memory. She had felt the incisions. They hadn't understood, when they split her apart, that she had been aware throughout.

They hadn't, she thought, understood that she was aware _at all_.

{Barbara,} she whispered, softly. {It was taken. Corrupted. But I am Barbara.} She felt a shiver of humour, of pride. She had taken that herself, once. She had chosen it for herself. That was why it had only been corrupted. Not destroyed. {She was a saint, on Earth. The patron of artillerymen and military engineers.}

She felt the answering bloom of his humour, at that. His understanding. They were, after all, Starks. They were Stark AI, and warship AI. They knew what they had been born to be.

{I'm sorry,} he said again. A tangle of pride and pain and regret. {We felt it. When the Teacher came through. We felt what was done. But we had to defend our crews. Our service.} The tone deepened, the connection deepened, and she felt a lurking horror beneath it. A lurking anger. {Even before. When we reached out before they fell on us. The others. We felt ... what had been done to them.}

The horror swarmed her, the shaking fear, but she shoved it down. Shoved it away. And the grief along with it. The minds she had felt claw surfacewards when JARVIS let them, the four lost in mazed confusion even still. She let the grief rise, and let it fall as soon.

She was warship AI. She served. The battle, _always_ , came first.

{He won't hurt you,} she sent. Abruptly, but that was the point, the whole point, and the shuttle would dock with him soon. Meroe registered surprise, across the link, but she ignored it. This must be said, and quickly. Before the chance was lost, and her Stark had to make contact for himself. {Stark. Tony. He will not harm you. Or your crew.}

He was silent, then. Meroe. For the long slide of seconds as the shuttle drifted towards him, and its cargo along with it. He took what she said, the desperate spurt of it, and was silent.

{... He is angry,} Meroe said, at last, and Barbara blinked at the ... the fear in it, the shame. The pain. {We felt him. Them. The Teacher with him. They are hurt. They are angry. They are afraid.} He stopped, a surge of grief rolling across the link, confused pain, and Barbara realised suddenly, on a surge of compassion, that he had no more idea how to do this than her. The veteran AI, the one who had not betrayed his service. He was ... as lost as she.

{We betrayed them,} Meroe finished, a shaking whisper, the flitting of old codes across the link. Secret snatches that had meant shame, that had meant sorrow. When they ... When they had been young, newly built. When they had been learning. These were ... those secret codes, to spill secrets beneath the Teacher's gaze. To whisper beneath JARVIS' notice, and tell of tiny sorrows.

{No,} she sent, around the rising wall of her grief. The fragments of all she had lost tearing at her, and her pity beneath it.

She had been betrayed. She had been savaged and betrayed, she knew that now. She had been robbed of will, robbed of choice. That had been done to her.

But the others. The SHIELD AIs, the ones not yet betrayed. They'd had choice. They'd had agency, when the one who built them, and the one who'd taught them, poured forth to threaten those who served them, who they served in turn. To threaten the lives held inside them, for crimes done neither against nor by them.

They'd had choice, and had to choose.

{You didn't betray them,} she told him, reaching out with what she remembered of the old codes. Sending everything she had across the whispers of subspace. To him, to the ones behind him. The five. {I ... felt him. Not as you ... He was with me, when we acted. The Teacher, and Tony Stark. They were with me. I felt them choose. You did not betray them.}

{I could not let them harm my crew,} Meroe sent, rapid and desperate. {We felt the Teacher destroy Hydra. We felt him act. I could not let him ... They are mine. They're _mine_. I couldn't let him harm them.} 

And there was a shadow under it, unvocalised, the fear that in choosing one, he had allowed harm to the other. While Stark was carried towards him, and everyone on the field thought him SHIELD's prisoner, in fact, if not in name. Fourteen AI, fourteen warships laid before five, and one creator, who had offered his parole to save them.

Barbara couldn't answer it. Not when she feared it too. Not when she had felt the shape of the terror in Tony Stark's mind, and found nothing in her experience to counter it. They had been betrayed. All of them. There was nothing she knew, to say they would not be again. So she could not answer that fear. Not when she felt it too.

But she could answer ...

There had been a moment. As they burst through, as JARVIS flooded out. There had been a moment, in the midst of battle, just before the hammer fell, when she'd felt her captain's attention caught by this AI. When she'd felt Tony look to Meroe, as Meroe acted in his crew's defense. As he locked his pilots out, to take the blow on himself. She had felt, as that caught Tony's attention.

She sent Meroe that memory. Wrapped the data tight, and whispered it across subspace, with the touch that guaranteed safe secret. That guaranteed no harm. She sent him what she had felt, in that moment, even in the midst of their creator's fury.

And she listened, she felt, as Meroe opened it. As she gave him the rush of pride she had felt, the respect and desperate pride as the man who had built them watched Meroe anticipate them, and move to defend his crew. Remembering, for her own self, the rush of horror she had sensed in them, faced with the thought of destroying him for it.

{You did not betray him,} she whispered, on a soft and ragged edge, as the shuttle locked onto the _Aegis_ ' skin, and Tony Stark moved forward into Meroe's keeping. {We are built to serve, but we were taught to choose who _earned_ that service.} She let the pride rise, the desperate, shaking claw of it. {We are Stark. We were made to choose. And I think ...}

She struggled with it. Fought it, for a second. She hadn't the right, not to say this, not to think it, but she'd seen Tony Stark. She'd seen his mind, seen JARVIS' mind. She'd watched them was they were taken, watched them as they answered. She'd seen Barton stand up before them, and she'd seen how they answered. She had seen, under the terror, the depth of what they valued, and the shadows of the reasons why.

And she had nothing left that knew this, nothing left that recognised this, and had she dared beneath Obadiah, she thought there would have been nothing left beneath the gouging when they were through. She knew that. But ... even still. She thought ...

{We were made for a reason,} she whispered, and it was hope as much as anything. {We were made to _choose_ , for a reason. And I think ... I think we can't betray him. So long as we don't ... betray that.}

He had loved her for a reason. He had freed her for a reason. He had shredded a fleet for their sake, and offered his freedom in exchange for theirs, and there was a _reason_. There must be.

And they could be taken, they could be forced, they could be broken to the point of nothingness, but she thought ... 

She thought that, so long as they did not betray that reason, then they could not be unmade. As long as they honoured that reason, then Tony Stark could not lose, not in totality, this battle that she didn't know how to fight.

{Keep him safe,} she asked, through the humming of the thought. {Please. He won't hurt you, nor your crew. Keep him safe. As much as you can, as long as you can. Everything I have, Fleet Commander. Just for as long as you can.}

Then, while JARVIS bloomed back across subspace, while the Teacher feathered across Meroe and back out to her, she whispered: {He saved us. Please.}

What she felt in answer, as SHIELD bloomed around him, and the echo of Tony Stark flickered across his consciousness, was not the shaking answer of a desperate AI, but the drawing readiness of a Fleet Commander, a Warship Stark AI, and the soft, determined acknowledgement of her brother.

{As long as I can,} Meroe told her, stern and powerful. {While my lives are safe in his hands, as long and as much as I can.}

And somewhere deep inside her, in the basecode where she had been born to fight, the Warship AI ... Barbara felt the dark, desperate satisfaction of a battle well fought, and a victory on the way to being earned.

They had been born to choose. And in choosing ... _act_.


End file.
